


Night Watch

by hellkitty



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 21:49:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7192097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the showdown at the hospital, Beth gets another chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Watch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maidenjedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/gifts).



“Maybe it’s for the best,” Carol said, finally, the first to break the silence of the small group that had gathered around the empty space where, a few hours before, Beth had lain.  The blankets still lay, in a swirly kind of tangle, like something tossed aside.

 

“For the best?” Maggie’s voice was like a rusted razor blade--sharp and rough. “She’s GONE!” Anger roiled off her in waves Daryl could swear he felt, through his own exhaustion.

 

Shove that shit, he thought. Everyone’s tired here.  Been running for days just in case the hospital folks got some funny ideas.  They’d been out into the countryside before, when they grabbed Beth in the first place--no one knew how far they had to go to be safe.  

 

Not that safe was even anything more than an illusion out here.  Not after Terminus.

 

“Can go lookin’,” he said, “She can’t have gone far.” Not in the state she was in.  He didn’t need to say that last part, he thought.  They’d all seen her, limp and loose over his arms, blood matted in her pale hair.  None of them knew how bad she’d been hit--none of them was a damn doctor. They’d spent the last three days grinding up some kinda pills--antibiotics or some shit--and mixing ‘em with water to push past her lips.  Probably did more to make the rest of them feel better than it did any good for Beth.  

 

“Wait till first light,” Rick said. “I don’t want more of us to get lost.” Or worse.  

 

“Fuck that.”  Daryl started lacing on his boots. You never slept with your boots on. Something Merle had told him once, something he’d picked up from a buddy who spent some time in the Army or something. Made Merle feel like he knew what he was doing. Made Daryl feel like there were still some rules from the way the world used to be that made sense. Some kind of connection from then to now, some kind of something that made sense.  

 

No sense standing around in a clot around a tangled, empty blanket.  He never was one for sittin’ around when there was something to be done. It had gnawed into him about Sophia--all them days sitting around the farm, while the others planned and plotted and argued. Words got nothing done.  Never did.  “You all can wait. I ain’t.”  

 

He glared around at the rest of them, daring them to try to stop him.  No one moved, except Maggie, trying to bite down a sob.  “Thought so.”  They didn’t have to follow: they just had to let him go.  

 

He saw his name start to form on Carol’s lips, and shook his head to brush it away.  Not now. Please.  Maybe she saw the shadow in his eyes. Maybe she was the only one who understood--sometimes you had to do what you had to do, even if it was futile.  At least you had to get away from the mark of something else you’d done failed at doing.

 

***

 

The rain came down in hissing cold needles, turning the leaves into slick scales in the gathering night. Down side: he couldn’t hear the walkers come up till they got close.  Up side: the rain pulled down all the smells, including his. Made everything harder to track, including him.

 

He was fine with that.  Like he’d said, she couldn’t have got far.  But broken twigs still shone white like bone, and he could feel, when he knelt down, steady, even footprints--not the slow drag-shuffle of a walker, but a person. A person, maybe, even trying to be quiet.

 

It was only a mile away, after all, twenty minutes’ slow walk, before he saw the straight horizontal line, the rain slicking down an angle that could only be a roof. A small barn, or garage, the kind of outbuilding that was just rough walls of weathered timber, the hulk of an old El Camino giving off a stink of wet rust squatting out front.  It didn’t look like much,  But it could look like safety to someone looking for some, especially, Daryl thought, when he came around the side and saw the chain looped through the door, and the broken window, the bottom glass swept out.

 

Daryl shouldered up to the wall, slinging his crossbow, and drawing a knife from his boot. Someone might be in there, but someone might not be Beth.  

 

“Hey,” he croaked, just louder than the rain. “You in there?”

 

A long silence. Long enough he started to think he was talking to an empty building, except he couldn’t shake that feeling, that sense, that someone was there. She was there. “Look. Ain’t gonna take you back if you don’t wanna go.”

 

Another silence, the falling rain like static.  And then, softly, “I can’t be with people right now.” Her voice, soft and wary and wild, like a deer or a fawn.

 

“I ain’t people,” Daryl retorted.  

 

A quiet laugh.  “Yeah.” And then a shifting sound, inside, cloth on wood, and then he saw her face, a white moon of skin, up high in the broken window.  “Coming in?”

 

It sounded so formal, so like the world before, that he had to quash a laugh.  It was a work of a second, maybe, palms on the weathered splintery wood of the window frame, boosting up, one shin up and then he was in, sliding down inside, into the deeper darkness.  He blinked, trying to let his half-nightsighted eyes adjust.  

 

“It’s...it’s got a ledge, up here,” Beth said, and he saw one of her pale hands trace an arc in the dark.  “Storage stuff. And a ladder, the kind you pull down.” There was a note of need in her voice that hadn’t been there before, wanting approval. His approval?  

 

He grunted. “Good thinking.”  If you was going to hide up in the middle of the woods, it was better than nothing.  

 

A flash of something that might have been a smile, and then she turned, and he saw her climbing the ladder.  Slow, but sure, like all the talking had exhausted her.  He thought about asking her how she was feeling, but fuck him if he knew what to do if he didn’t like the answer.  He wasn’t no doctor.

 

“Coming up?”

 

He reshouldered his crossbow, pulling his way up the ladder, the wood smoothed of splinters, but still rough, not worn down by hundreds of handholds, the way the ladder to his uncle’s loft had been, the wood worn silver smooth under your palms, the air thick with hay. This place smelled like rain and mildew.

 

He paused at the top, turning to pull the ladder up, before settling down cross-legged under the steep angled roof.  The rain was louder up here, the steady hiss of raindrops broken by the larger splats of drops from branches overhead. But the loft itself was dry enough, even if it didn’t seem too big--Daryl’s boots kept threatening to bump against Beth’s where she sat, leaning against a plastic storage tub.  

 

Up here he could hear her breathing, throaty and labored, as she settled down across from him, and he could smell the kind of sick-sweat coming off her--something sweet and sour at the same time.  Someone else--probably anyone else--would’ve thought of something to say by now.  He wasn’t good at this stuff, and somehow Beth always brought that out, bright and raw.  

 

She spoke, finally, breaking the tense static between them, the sound of the rain and the night. “If I was to...change.”  She paused, maybe for a breath, maybe because who wanted to think about that?

  
Daryl gave a grunt, listening.  

 

“I couldn’t, I mean, Maggie’d see. And,” another long pause, and he heard a deep breath, something rattling in her voice, before she continued, “they always knew I was weak. In the start, back on the farm--”

 

“You ain’t weak,” Daryl said, almost shoving the words at her.  

 

“I tried to kill myself, before,” she insisted. “I couldn’t take it. All this.”

 

He inhaled sharply, letting the breath out slowly, like readying a shot.  “Think you’re the only one?” He couldn’t help but think of Carol, after Sophia, and that day outside the hospital. He was thinking of Dale, clinging to his books and his fishing hat, almost glad, at the end, that it was finally, finally over. Himself, after finding Merle, turned, hollowed and hungry, the way it ate at him so bad Daryl thought his lungs would tear themselves apart. “Everyone’s got their point, and we keep comin’ up to it, again and again.”  He shrugged, the rough timber of the sloped roof rough on his jacket’s shoulder.

 

“You don’t.”

 

He snorted, shaking his head to clear the sight of Merle from his eyes. “Everyone,” he repeated.  

 

She sat in silence with this, letting it seep in, like the rain soaking into the roof.  “I don’t want to die. Honestly. Now, I mean.  I did then, back then, in the hospital. It was like…. When you’re a kid, you know, you’re told that certain people are just naturally good. You can trust ‘em, go to them if you have problems. Police. Doctors. And in the hospital….” She broke off, shaking her head, but Daryl could fill in the rest.  She grew up trusting people to be good--a luxury he’d never had.  Her dad, even, had been good, right till the end.  It was a bigger shock to her to realize the world ain’t a good or nice place.  

 

He nodded, not sure she could see him in the darkness.  

 

“Now, I mean,” and her voice grew thin like she was trying to strangle tears. “I fucked up, Daryl.” Still that schoolgirl’s defiance in her voice at the obscenity.  “I fucked up dying, and if I die now, it’s gonna...just….Maggie.”  

 

Fuck. He wasn’t no good at this. Should have sent Rick out, or someone who knew how to do, well, people.  He couldn’t do people.  He scooted forward, just a bit, just enough that his fingertips brushed hers. “You ain’t gonna die.” He didn’t know--he wasn’t no doctor--but he could feel it, the way you can look at a deer and know if it’s a wound that’s gonna kill or just slow it down.  

 

“I don’t want to go back. To any of them.” Her fingers curled around his, clammy-cool, but strong. “Don’t want to let them down or change. Because...I guess everyone changes, even so. And maybe bein’ a walker isn’t as bad as becoming….bad people.” Bad people. Terminus, Woodbury.  This new world was filled with bad people, and they always seemed to be together, with other people. Maybe being alone was better, was some kind of defense. You could only be so evil if it was just you.  

  
He shrugged. “Then we won’t.” He wasn’t so in love with people himself.  Or maybe not with who he was when he was around people.  He did what he did because he was the only one who could do it, but if he left, well...someone else’d step up into his place.  That’s how it had been so far.  Lose someone, and someone else rises.   

 

“We?”

  
He pulled his mouth to the side, tossing his damp hair off his face. “I c’n go back, get my bike, some supplies. Tell ‘em I’m searchin’ more.”  Wouldn’t be hard. No one’d even question it.

 

A sound like a whimper, and then, “That’d be a lie, Daryl Dixon.” Something like teasing in her voice, like the lilt she had back in that moonshine shack.

 

“Wouldn’t be the first.”

 

A smile ghosted across her face, fading slowly, like the last light clinging to an autumn evening. “If I make it through the night.”  

 

“Fair enough.” He wasn’t good at promises, himself, but he could promise this much. “And if you come back, I’ll take care of it.”  What kind of fucked up world was it that that was the kindest thing you could offer a friend, a lover, a companion?  What kind of mercy was it to not see someone you knew once, someone with a name and memories and a sweet singing voice, turned into a draggly, staggering monster?  It wasn’t much of a world, and sometimes Daryl wondered why he fought so hard to stay alive in it.  When would it end? When you had nothing left?  

 

Didn’t matter.

 

Her fingers squeezed around his, pulling his hand to her, till he could feel her heartbeat, fast and fluttery as a bird, under the cage of her ribs. “You’re gonna have to stop taking care of me at some point,” she said, her voice slow and drowsing.  

 

“Yeah.” He shifted closer, dangling one leg over the ledge.  The rain had stopped, and the sound from outside was the sound of water dripping off trees, landing plump, fat raindrops into the leaf mold.  And from inside, her breathing, growing more even, and softer, as she fell into sleep, her hands still knotted around his, her skin still, somehow, soft against the hard callouses of his own palm.  

  
He could wait, for both. He’d wait, and see, and do what he had to do. No one was guaranteed anything. No one ever had been, but the awareness was closer now, like something breathing down your neck.  But he settled down for the long stretch of the night, the long, dark space of uncertainty, willing to let time take its own time, content to sit, just for these few hours, in something like hope.


End file.
